Revenge by David Pilling

tuft of white beard on his chin, was surrounded by a ring of men that jeered and jostled and spat insults at him. A fine red cloak trimmed with rabbit fur had been torn from his body, along with his doublet, leaving him in his shirt and breeches.
    Richard tossed the shrieking Kate into the arms of a startled esquire. “Make her watch,” he said, and stalked towards Sir Thomas.
    “You may save your wind, Bolton,” the old knight said calmly. “I’ll not beg for my life.”
    “Proud Malvern won’t beg for his life,” sneered Richard, standing aside to let him see his granddaughter, “but will he beg for hers?”
    Sir Thomas’ haggard face drained of colour. He started towards her, but two men seized his arms and held him fast. “You can’t mean it,” he cried out. “Not the child. She is innocent!”
    “Perhaps I will slit her throat, or dash her head against the wall,” snarled Richard, thrusting his face close to Sir Thomas’s. “Where is your mess of children, Malvern? Where is your son, Geoffrey, that great shivering baboon, and those three virginal pigs you call daughters?”
    “God has vouchsafed to keep them from my house, and beyond your reach,” replied the old knight, recovering some of his composure. “Geoffrey has gone to Sandwich to join Lord Fauconberg’s army, and my daughters are safe with their cousins at Hereford.”
    Richard took a step back, peeled off one of his steel gauntlets and struck Sir Thomas across the face with it. “So Geoffrey has gone to join traitors, has he? No matter – his turn shall come.”
    He struck again, causing blood to burst from Sir Thomas’s lip. “Where are your friends? Where are the noble Ramage and Huntley, that conspired with you to slay my father at Blore Heath? Where are they now, eh? Why don’t you call for them?”
    He punctuated each question with more blows, until the blood streamed from Sir Thomas’s mouth and nose. “They all live,” his victim gasped. “And, if it pleases God, they will avenge me.”
    Richard dropped the gauntlet and grabbed Sir Thomas by the throat. “It is for me to speak of vengeance,” he said in a low voice. “You killed my father, and so I shall kill you, and all your kin.”
    “I killed Edward Bolton in fair fight,” Sir Thomas protested. A dark feeling burst in Richard’s breast, flooding his whole body with hot blood.
    “Put down this traitor!” he screamed. The men holding Sir Thomas forced him to his knees.
    Richard hesitated for a moment. His ears rang with the screams of Malvern’s granddaughter, and his nostrils were filled with the stench of smoke and blood.
    “Find me a block,” he ordered. The esquire who was now wearing Sir Thomas’s stolen cloak took a log from the woodpile next to the barn and set it before the prisoner.
    Richard slowly drew his father’s sword from its scabbard. “You may recall this from Blore Heath,” he said, holding up the blade so Sir Thomas’s face was reflected in the dully gleaming steel. “If you had faced my father like a man, one on one, it would have drank your blood then. The blade has suffered a terrible thirst since then, Malvern. It must be quenched.”
    The esquire ripped Sir Thomas’s shirt, exposing his chest. Two men seized the man’s neck and forced it down onto the log.
    “All your kin shall die, Malvern,” Richard shouted as he raised the sword high, double-handed, “including sweet, innocent little Kate. There – let that be your last thought.”
    The sword flashed down, a blow almost nine months in the making, and neatly carved Sir Thomas Malvern’s head from his shoulders.
    “Now the girl?” said the man holding Kate. She hung limp in his arms, having swooned at the sight of her grandfather’s beheading. Richard looked around from wiping his sword.
    “Of course not,” he said irritably. “I don’t make war on children. Let her go.”
    He stooped and picked up Sir Thomas’s severed head. “This shall go to the Sheriff in a